


Sleeping Visions, Waking Dreams

by LogosMinusPity



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/F, Present Tense, fangst, memories of crystal sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:13:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogosMinusPity/pseuds/LogosMinusPity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only when overcome by sleep and dream alike can you remember the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Visions, Waking Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> _Feeling the past moving in_   
> _Letting a new day begin_   
> _Hold to the time that you know_   
> _You don’t have to move on to let go_

Unlike all of the others, Fang doesn’t have the same kind of vague memories from her crystal dreams.  She remembers her second sleep—the one from after they saved Cocoon—perfectly.   Those crystal dreams can be recalled as clear as day with ease.

Her first sleep, though… _that_ is a different story.  Even now, with her full memories from the War of Transgressions restored, that five hundred year nap in crystal afterward remains a consistently fuzzy blank slate.

Fang has always been of the opinion that it was perhaps the gods’ graces to her after forming Ragnarok on her own—five hundred years of a pleasantly blank slate, of time enough to regain her mind and at least some semblance of her sanity, though she’s always only half-jokingly said that she has a few screws loose.  To have become the Beast, to have sacrificed herself to the spirit of rage and vengeance...it is perhaps a mercy that she does not remember.

But she sleeps, and when she sleeps and the night overtakes her, she dreams, and she remembers.

And she stands alone, on a beachfront that is Oerba, but Oerba is not there.

The wet sand digs in between her toes, and she sinks downward ever so slightly, the weight of her body pressing against the resistance of the tiny grains.

It only vaguely occurs to her that she is naked, yet she is unbothered by it.  She feels the brush of wind against her skin, across her face, and between her parted legs, neither hot nor cold.  But the wind is silent, and she...she is empty inside.

Her head tilts back toward the open sky.

It hangs there, in the clouds, an open gash bleeding crystal blood over the dying land of Pulse, over broken cities and ghost-filled valleys, all hunted by the same silent wind, and smothered in the same crystal dust. 

Cocoon is crumbling apart, falling slowly but inexorably from the heavens to the earth below, shedding crystal blood, but yet giving no new life.

And she...she stands on the beachfront, broken dreams lapping at her feet in the waves.

She looks down to the open hands in front of her, naked, clawed, and blue.

But she is empty, and there is nothing inside of her anymore.

* * *

Fang jerks awake, open-mouthed and gasping for a breath against the tremendous weight that seems to press against her chest.

She takes in a ragged and desperate gulp of air, and it chokes in her throat, burning.  In response, her lungs spasm forcefully, and she is caught between half-parts coughing and sobbing—she sobs first from the entirely overwhelming panic which has engulfed her, nameless and blind, and then second from sheer relief, for the panic means that she is alive, and that she is herself again.

Then arms are around her, engulfing her own, pulling her close to a body that, while smaller than hers, radiates with the heat of life.

“I’m here, Fang.”

Even not yet fully awake, with sleep no doubt still clouding the blue eyes, and with words barely above a whisper, Lightning’s voice is equal parts clear and cutting.

She tries to speak back, to say something, _anything_ , but the words catch in her throat and choke no different than her breath.  So she instead clutches at the woman before her, fingers digging in to skin and flesh with enough intensity to leave bruises, terrified to let go.

“Fang.” Lightning’s voice is intent, all focus, but there is concern beneath it, too, and that shakes Fang even further.

She has never been one for the deeply sentimental spoken words, but the ghosts of her past still dance in front of her eyes, and still claw at her memories, hidden though they are.

It takes her a very long few seconds, too long, to regain some semblance of herself, to push back even just enough of the lingering terror that strangulates her every thought and movement.  Yet Lightning is patient.  Even in the dark, her eyes are calm and steady, and she waits.  She does not push and does not press, no matter what thoughts must have been roused within her.  She waits, and it is to that steady reassurance that Fang clutches to.

Fang reaches out then, places her hand over Lightning’s bare breast, exactly over where the l’Cie brand was once painfully inked over her heart.  The pale skin is warm beneath the spread of Fang’s clammy fingers, and she takes a shuddering breath, finding solace in the slow but steady heartbeat that she can feel beneath the flesh and blood. 

“I’m yours, Lightning.  My heart is yours.” Her voice is hoarse as she makes the declaration, and her words still shake with a fear that no true warrior should ever show. “I…I don’t know what I would do without you.”

And it is the truth.  Here, just as much as in Orphan’s Cradle, just as much as in the Fifth Ark, Lightning has protected her from the worst within herself, unknowing though it may be; she has been the calm rock to which Fang even now clings, keeping her afloat from the whirling wrath of the Beast just within Fang’s own skin.

But the woman’s eyes are unreadable now, and she speaks no words of quick and reassuring comfort.  There is no hug, no kiss, no declaration of undying love back.  Instead, Lightning gently but firmly pulls Fang’s hand from away her chest, and Fang feels something precious and terrible within her begin to crumble.

Yet Lightning is not yet done.  Still holding Fang’s hand within her own, she guides their intertwined digits further back, stopping only once they have come to rest gently against the curving cheekbone of Fang’s own face.

“Without me,” murmurs Lightning, and her fingers stroke lightly between the spaces where Fang’s hand is splayed.  Her eyes don’t flicker in the slightest, and though so seemingly unreadable before, Fang recognizes a sea of emotion behind them. “Without me...you would be the same as you are right now, and as you’ve always been.  You’d be Fang, and that’s enough.”

And her words, so unexpected but directly honest, strike a deep chord within Fang, and that _is_ enough.  Her tortured mind and muscles abruptly relax, and she feels the Beast within her settle, and she is just Fang again, as she always has been, as she always was.

And it is enough.

She sighs then, and her breath is filled with both sweet relief and a deep love, the likes of which she thinks she will never be able to express properly.

Who this woman is by her side, how she got there and how she remains there...it is a mystery to Fang.  But she remembers all that this woman has done for her and more.  

She remembers.  And those memories that they’ve built together, the memories that they have yet to make, those are enough to overcome everything.

Fang closes her eyes for a moment.  She slips her hand out from underneath Lightning’s and enjoys the feel of Lightning’s palm cradled against her cheek, falls back into the touch.

It is only then that Lightning leans in.

The kiss is slow and lingering, and not without its own heat, but more comforting and tender than it is sensual, and Fang feels that in the moment, she could stay forever, pressed against Lightning, skin to skin, in the darkest hours of the night, content.

She wraps her arms back around Lightning, and sighs a second time as the woman makes herself comfortable.  She rests her head into the crook of Fang’s neck, pink hair tickling her throat for a second, but Fang doesn’t mind.  The heat of the woman is warm against her, a silent but soothing lullaby as her heart rate slows and her eyes flutter closed in the dark room.  And as sleep takes her again, a small smile still decorated her face.

She is not afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> _Enter the memory you keep,_   
> _Remember when you fall asleep_   
> _Hold to the love that you know_   
> _You don’t have to give up to let go_
> 
> _Remember turning on the night_   
> _And moving through the morning light_   
> _Remember how it was with you_   
> _Remember how you pulled me through_
> 
> _I remember._
> 
> (lyrics accredited to "I Remember" by Deadmau5 & Kaskade)


End file.
